March 30, 2009

In English: He trembles at everything, even if so much as a mouse moves.

Today's saying describes someone who is scared of absolutely everything, even something as small as a mouse. It's something like the English saying about somebody "being scared of his own shadow," which is to say, someone who is scared of something insubstantial that cannot do him any harm at all. The scurrying of mouse makes a perceptible sound so that it is something you would notice - but only somebody who is really trembling with fear is going to shudder at the movement of that mouse.

The idea behind this proverb is a very simple one, and easy for us to grasp. Yet the Latin here can really trip students up, since we are in the realm here of "little" Latin words, words like licet and vel, which do not have a simple formulaic English translation that can be applied in all cases. These little words are, indeed, like the mouse of today's proverb: it is the scurrying of these little Latin words that can strike fear into the heart of the Latin student. But no need: the words are here to convey meaning, not to do you any harm. So, let's take a look at both of these little words, licet and vel.

The word licet can be a real conundrum for Latin students. Sometimes licet can be a verb which is used impersonally to express permission or license to do something, as in one of my favorite Latin proverbs, Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi, "What is permitted to Jupiter is not permitted to the ox." Here licet is being used as the main verb in each clause, with a dative complement.

Sometimes, however, licet is used, not as a verb, but as an adverb. In particular, it can be used as a conjunction, expressing the idea that (even if) something is permitted, (nevertheless) something else. For a specific example, here's a line from Seneca: Vita brevis est, licet supra mille annos exeat, "Life is short, even if it were to extend more than a thousand years." Notice that in English we render this licet with the conjunctive adverbial phrase "even if." You can tell that licet is not really functioning as a verb in this sentence, because there is another finite verb right there in the same clause: exeat. So, exeat is the verb, and licet is serving as an adverb. That is the same case in today's proverb: Ad omnia trepidat, licet vel mus movet, where movet is the verb, and licet is playing the role of an adverb (the fact that the verb used here is indicative, rather than subjunctive, shows that the saying is probably post-classical in origin).

What then about the vel? This is a word that students are often taught to automatically render with the English word "or" - a word which obviously will not work here: the sentence, "He trembles at everything, even if or a mouse moves," simply does not make sense.

If you think about the etymology of Latin vel, you can find a good clue for how to proceed here. Like licet, the adverbial vel also comes from a verbal root: volo. The word vel is, in fact, an old imperative form of the verb volo: "want!" So, historically, the way to understand the meaning of the Latin word vel is something very much like our English idiom, "if you please," where some kind of alternative is expressed in terms of the subjective wishes of the recipient of the message: "(or if) you like."

The problem, of course, is that the use of the English idiom "if you like" is a bit heavy-handed for translating the Latin vel. So, what you have to do whenever you face a Latin vel, is to try a range of English translations - the simple "or" might suffice, but if it does not, as in the case of today's proverb, you need to be prepared to search through a wider range of English idioms. I opted for "so much as a mouse" in today's translation, hoping to capture some more of the charm of the Latin alliteration in mus movet. As always, translation is an art - imperfect at best - where being able to convey the "spirit" of the original sometimes requires a bit of creativity with the "letter" of the original - if you please! :-)

So, hoping you will not tremble at the mouse-like little words of Latin that you find scurrying about in today's proverb, here it is read out loud:

March 26, 2009

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March 17, 2009

This proverb is based on the metaphorical opposition between the wolf and the lamb: the (rapacious, powerful, ruthless) wolves devour the (innocent, meek, powerless) lambs. Because the image of the wolf and the image of the lamb are so powerfully expressive and unambiguous, the proverb is able to speak to us in code, giving us a maxim we can apply to the human world at large. The word "wolf" has even given us a verb of its own in English: to "wolf" your food means to eat it in haste, to gobble or devour it.

What is worth nothing about the Latin phrase Agnos lupi vorant is not so much the words themselves (which are used in a very familiar metaphor), but the word order. In particular, we should note that the the word agnos is in the first position. This gives the word a special emphasis in the sentence. The other emphatic position in the sentence is the final word, vorant. So, by means of the word order, the Latin chooses to give special emphasis to the words agnos and vorant, with the least emphasis being given to the word lupi.

When it comes to the English translation, we are really in trouble as a result, since in English word order is not a matter of style, but a matter of grammar. The subject comes first in an English sentence, and is then followed by the verb which is followed by the object: S-V-O. So, in English we translate the statement, "The wolves eat the lambs," giving the first position the wolves, the word which was least emphatic in the Latin word order.

So, as always in translating, you are faced with a real dilemma. Do you just stick to the grammar? There is no grammar of Latin word order (only style), but in English there is a strict grammar of word order, and the only grammaticaly sentence you can make with these words is, "The wolves devour the lambs." If you wanted to convey the style of the Latin word order, you'd have to use a round-about expression, something like: "It's the lambs whom the wolves devour." Such a long and complicated sentence puts the lambs before the subject and the verb, but the length and complexity of the resulting sentence has not created a stylistic difference that is far removed from the simplicity of the Latin.

As always, then, my recommendation is just not to translate into English. Enjoy the Latin on its own terms for its own sake! Latin puts the word agnos first, as if to say in English, "Oh my gosh: the LAMBS...! The wolves are devouring the lambs." Latin also puts some emphasis on vorant, being in the final position, as if to say in English: "Oh my gosh: the LAMBS...! The wolves are devouring the lambs - not just eating them, DEVOURING them." This is a paraphrase which manages to suggest in English what the Latin is able to convey through the word order. Of course, it would not qualify as a translation for the purposes of an AP Latin exam - but it is what you need to have in mind if you want to have a sense in English of just what the Latin sentence is saying, and how it is choosing to say it.

So, thinking about those poor little lambs, being devoured in the emphatic first position, here is today's proverb read out loud:

Today's proverb comes from the book of the Bible which is called Ecclesiasticus in the Vulgate, not to be confused with the book of Ecclesiastes!

The word Ecclesiastes is a Greek noun adopted into Latin, meaning a member of the assembly (traditional Greek usage) or a member of the "church" (Christian usage gave the Greek word "ekklesia" a new sense related to the assembly of believers). When the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, was prepared, the book of the Hebrew Bible called Qohelet was rendered in Greek as Ecclesiastes. Then, in the Vulgate Bible, the Greek name of the book was transliterated into Roman characters, rather than being translated into an actual Latin word. Jerome had argued that the book should be called Concionator (a translation of the Latin word), but Jerome's suggestion met with no success and the word concionator failed to become part of the Christian Latin vocabulary.

What, then, about Ecclesiasticus? This is a non-canonical book of the Bible, but it has a special status among those non-canonical books, as reflected in the name itself. The Latin word ecclesiasticus is an adjective, meaning "belonging to the church (ecclesia)," and it was a name bestowed on this book of the Bible by the early Latin Fathers of the Church in acknowledgment of the fact that passages from this book were widely known and also used in church worship services. So, even though the book is not part of the Bible, it came to be called "the church book," Ecclesiasticus, among the Latin fathers, and was even included in the canon of Epiphanius.

Before it acquired the name Ecclesiasticus, however, this book was known by another name: The Wisdom of Ben-Sira, or The Wisdom of the Son of Sira. In Greek, it was called simply Sirach (the final "ch" being added to the name to indicate its Hebrew origin, even though the "ch" is not part of the Hebrew spelling of the name). The early Latin versions of the book followed this same convention, calling the book Sirach.

Yet who was the "Son of Sira"? In some versions of the title, his name is given as the Hebrew name Yeshua, which is Jesus in Latin, so the book has this title in the Vulgate: Liber Iesu filii Sirach, which is to say, The Book of Jesus, the son of Sirach.

Confusing enough? You will indeed find this book referred to by all manner of titles in English, sometimes based on the Hebrew or Greek or Latin. So: Ecclesiasticus, Ben Sira, Sira, Sirach, Ben Sirach (a rather bizarre amalgam of Hebrew and Greek!), Siracides (a Greek neologism meaning "son of Sirac"), Wisdom of Ben Sira, and Wisdom of Jesus son of Sira.

What is really important, of course, is what an AMAZING book this is. Given my own interest in proverbs and wisdom literature, this is one of my own favorite books of the Bible. If you have never read through this book of the Bible, it is definitely worth your attention. There is a parallel edition of Sirach at Sacred Texts with Greek, Latin, and English (the book was originally written in Hebrew, but a complete Hebrew text has not survived, although major portions of the Hebrew text have been recovered from the famous Cairo Geniza). You can also read more about the background of the book in this Wikipedia article, and also in this article from the Catholic Encyclopedia online.

So, as a sample of the "wisdom of the son of Sira," here is today's proverb read out loud:

Yes, I'm back blogging here again. I finally figured out how to salvage the old posts from this blog and to start adding new ones again (details here if you are curious). To get back into the swing of things, I'm going to work my way through the proverbs that are included in the Aesop's Fables in Latin book that just came out - it's got around 130 proverbs interspersed with the fables (list of proverbs here).

The one I picked out for today about blowing hot and cold out of the same mouth can be found in Erasmus's Adagia (1.8.30) and goes with the Aesop's fable of the satyr who found a man frozen in the snow. Here's one version of that story in Latin:

The Satyr took pity on a traveller who was overwhelmed by snow and laid low by ice, and led the man into his cave. As the man warmed his hands by blowing on them with his mouth, the satyr asked why he did this, and the man said, "To warm them." Then when they sat down to dinner, the traveller blew on his porridge. Asked why he did this, he said, "To cool it." Then straightaway the Satyr threw the traveller out, saying, "I don't want you to be in my cave, since your mouth goes this way and that way."

When the satyr thinks that the man can blow hot and cold from the same mouth, it terrifies him. Yet it is also worth noting a quite different use of the same metaphorical materials in the Bible, from the Book of Revelation. In Chapter 3, this is the message to be addressed to the church in Laodicea: